Created alongside his better known and more often performed work, Island Universe Story: Selections compiles songs chosen from three Island Universe Story tapes, released between 2012-2014, and puts them to vinyl - on a special, clear tinsel LP, limited to 1000 copies.
If the Island Universe Story cassettes were subconscious representations of other worlds in his and our shared imagination, this limited edition vinyl represents the leakiness between those worlds. Some of the records contain silver threads, the sheddings of those dreamy beasts that have joined him on stage in cities all over the world, animated by new friends in each venue where Helado Negro has performed.
Other records in this limited pressing contain other colors of tinsel, the remnants or rumor of other realms in the multiverse, the blue, gold, or multi-colored metallic sweepings left behind by creatures we haven’t yet met and can only imagine.
Note: the tinsel does cause slight static pops.

Helado Negro - Private Energy (Cassette)

Release Date:

Private Energy is the fifth album from Roberto Carlos Lange a.k.a. Helado Negro. Written and produced by Lange, the album is an interpersonal communication of sounds about his surroundings past, present, and future. Private Energy, which follows 2013’ s Invisible Life and 2014’ s tour de force Double Youth, continues the work Lange has done as an artist, culminating in the most captivating artistic statement of his career. The music draws from his expansive knowledge of sampling, sound synthesis, recording and history of references, and the album was created as a performance piece in tandem with his Tinsel Mammal dancers. Present at each Helado Negro show, the Tinsel Mammal dancers, costumed head-to-toe in silver strands, are a visual representation of sound and a sensual gateway to profoundly personal lyrics. The Tinsel Mammals are not representative of any human form. They work as a shimmering objects that represent the ideas of genderless and raceless beings and Private Energy’ s themes of self-love, pride, and the embrace of constant change.

Julianna Barwick - The Magic Place (LP + Download Card)

The Magic Place is the third record from Julianna Barwick, and the first to be released by Asthmatic Kitty. This nine piece, 43 minute album is a cinematic journey through glacial pacing and drifting drones. The occasional icy down-plink of piano, Julianna’s gorgeous churchhouse sigh of a voice, a swell of a dozen voices rising in harmony, this is music from the inside of the fortress of solitude, the work of a solitary creator, a message from a crystal palace of reverb and avant-choral bliss.

Sufjan Stevens - Carrie & Lowell (Cassette)

Carrie & Lowell sounds like memory: it spans decades yet does not trade on pastiche or nostalgia. Stevens's gauzy double-tracked vocals wash across the dashboard of long-finned, drop-top Americana, yet as we race towards the coast we are reminded that sunshine leads to shadow, for this is a landscape of terminal roads, unsteady bridges, traumatic video stores, and unhappy beds that provide the scenery for tales of jackknifed cars, funerals, and forgiveness for the dead. Each track in this collection of eleven songs begins with a fragile melody that gathers steam until it becomes nothing less than a modern hymn. Sufjan recounts the indignities of our world, of technological distraction and sad sex, of an age without neither myths nor miracle - and this time around, his voice carries the burden of wisdom. Carrie & Lowell accomplishes the rare thing that any art should achieve, particularly in these noisy and fragmented days: By seeking to understand, Sufjan makes us feel less alone.

Sufjan Stevens - Carrie & Lowell (LP + Download Card)

Carrie & Lowell sounds like memory: it spans decades yet does not trade on pastiche or nostalgia. Stevens's gauzy double-tracked vocals wash across the dashboard of long-finned, drop-top Americana, yet as we race towards the coast we are reminded that sunshine leads to shadow, for this is a landscape of terminal roads, unsteady bridges, traumatic video stores, and unhappy beds that provide the scenery for tales of jackknifed cars, funerals, and forgiveness for the dead. Each track in this collection of eleven songs begins with a fragile melody that gathers steam until it becomes nothing less than a modern hymn. Sufjan recounts the indignities of our world, of technological distraction and sad sex, of an age without neither myths nor miracle - and this time around, his voice carries the burden of wisdom. Carrie & Lowell accomplishes the rare thing that any art should achieve, particularly in these noisy and fragmented days: By seeking to understand, Sufjan makes us feel less alone.

Sufjan Stevens - The Age of Adz (2xLP + Download Card)

The Age of Adz (pronounced Odds) is Sufjan Stevens' first full-length collection of original songs since 2005's conceptual pop opus Illinois. This new album is probably his most unusual, first, for its lack of conceptual underpinnings, and second, for its extensive use of electronics. The album almost entirely eschews the songwriter's former tools of the trade: namely, acoustic instruments that accompany an expansive narrative scope. While the sounds on this record are distinctly "artificial" (drums machines and analog synthesizers reign supreme), the proclamations of the songs are unabashedly visceral, sung loudly, with a backdrop of insistent orchestration. The result is an album that is perhaps more vibrant, more primary, and more explicit than anything Sufjan has done before, incorporating themes that are neither historical nor civic, but rather personal and primal (if even a little juvenile). Love, sex, death, disease, illness, anxiety, and suicide make appearances in an aggressive (and sometimes danceable) tapestry of electronic pop, conveyed with the urgency, immediacy, and anxiety of primary colors.

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Joseph Abajian (DJ Jab) founded Fat Beats in 1994 with nothing more than a shoestring budget and an earnest obsession with the music, the culture, and the brotherhood of New York’s burgeoning rap scene. What began as a simple vinyl shop in Manhattan’s Lower East Side quickly became an integral hub for artists, both aspiring and established, to convene and collaborate on new projects. Joseph’s timing couldn’t have been more impeccable. When the 90’s cultural zeitgeist – and, in turn, the music industry establishment – chose hip-hop as its new arbiter of cool.

International tourists and touring artists alike flocked to Fat Beats for rare vinyl, kindred spirits, and exclusive in-store performances from Jay Z, Eminem, Gang Starr, Outkast, Slum Village, Mos Def, and more. One thing was clear: the Fat Beats phenomenon could no longer be contained in a single basement shop.

In the late nineties, Abajian proceeded to open new stores in Amsterdam, Tokyo, Los Angeles, and Atlanta. He further expanded the company’s profile to include global distribution and record label branches. Distribution has since proven to be the company’s strongest and most enduring enterprise. Today Fat Beats Distribution stands poised as one of the country’s pre-eminent distributors of vinyl & specialty item records: a proud survivor in an industry now famous for its mortality rate. Despite market fluctuations, technology innovations, and stylistic revolutions, Fat Beats has remained steadfast in its commitment to the timeless vinyl format and to the loyal community who keeps it spinning.

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Fat Beats offers internship opportunities. You must be enrolled in college and reside in the Los Angeles area to be eligible for our programs. If you meet these requirements, please paste your cover letter below and we will contact you if there are open positions available.

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Online Retail / MarketingShipping & ReceivingSalesA&R

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- Enrollment in an accredited college/university that offers an internship program for academic credit - Knowledge and passion in independent music and culture; with a specific interest in the artists/releases that Fat Beats supports- Familiarity with Microsoft Office applications- Positive attitude - no task should be considered too small- Must be located in the greater Los Angeles area